holocene
by QuietLittleVoices
Summary: You chase the sun over the horizon and don't stop 'till the sky turns pink. ((Implied Dean/Cas, 9x10 Coda))


The rain chills your skin as you walk from the mouth of the bridge to your car. You pull out and you don't look back. You don't look in the mirrors and you don't think; you let the steady drumming of the rain on the windows drown out your shouting thoughts.

You chase the sun over the horizon and don't stop 'till the sky turns pink, and then you pick the first motel you see. The neon sign cuts through the morning fog but not that which rests in your mind, and you pay for the room on a bogus credit card. You don't check your phone before you go to sleep, feeling as if even your soul is dragging you down, but if you had you might have seen a text, one that you won't reply to in the morning when you do see it.

_If you're poison, what does that mean for me?_

There's a rage boiling under your skin, one that you can't explain, and it makes you break the bathroom mirror before you leave. You don't wrap your hand, but you do make sure the bleedings stopped and that you didn't break any fingers before you drive on. There's no destination, just away.

Cas texts you again when you stop to eat.

_Will you tell me where you are?_

You take a while to reply, considering all your options. You can still feel the rain cold on your skin and your words thick in your mouth, so your decision is simple.

_No_.

He doesn't text you again that day.

But he does text you the next day. ('_I mixed the laundry loads. The white shirts are now pink_.'). And the day after that. ('_We made cheeseburgers. Sam says they aren't as good as yours. I wish I knew._'). And then he just keeps texting you, even though more often than not you don't reply. Sometimes they're about his day ('_Sam taught me how to play chess. He seems to have forgotten that I made strategies for war_.') and sometimes… sometimes they aren't, and those are the worst ones. Those are the ones you don't delete, but can't bring yourself to read again, because the empty pit they opened inside of you the first time was large enough ('_I've been borrowing your clothes, because Sam's are too big and I can't keep mine clean. They smell like you, and soap. Come home._').

The texts become your anchor. Black letters on white speech bubbles, holding you together when you can feel yourself falling apart. You're tearing yourself apart and he's not there but he's still holding you together. You don't know what to think about that.

You don't know how long it's been since the rain and the bridge and the cold that found its way into you and made its home between your ribs. Weeks, maybe. It doesn't matter.

The pain starts in your chest – seizes your lungs and your heart and covers your face until you feel like you're going to break apart or suffocate. So you pull over on the heard shoulder and get out of the car. You stumble over to the low fence separating the road from the wilderness and you look out into the trees. You grip the wood tightly as you fall to your knees and feel the splinters push into your palms, but you don't care. You're already scarred, inside and out, so what does this matter?

The sobs shake your body one by one, coming over you in waves as you sit in the dirt. You don't care if you're seen, don't care if anyone stops to see if you're alright. It doesn't matter anymore.

You move back to sit with your back against the wheel of the Impala and you pull out your phone. Cas' text from that day sits unread in your inbox, so you click it and read, '_I set off the sprinklers today trying to make pie'_, and it makes you laugh – a broken, hysterical noise pulled from deep in your gut and you can't stop laughing until there are more tears running down your face, and you thought that you couldn't cry anymore but apparently you can.

The emptiness makes you do the only thing you can, and soon you have the phone pressed against your ear and you're listening to the monotone buzz of the dial tone. Every noise makes you want to hang up, but you don't.

"Dean," Cas says, voice worried.

You don't say anything, just breathe.

"Dean, are you alright?" Cas asks, and there's so much genuine concern in his voice you feel another broken laugh rip itself out of your chest.

You don't answer right away. "No," comes your voice, eventually. You don't have the energy to lie to him.

"Come home," Cas says. It's not a request. But you know that if you disagree, well… there's nothing he can do about it.

"Don't hang up," you say instead of answering.

You can almost hear him nodding, all the way on the other end of the line. "Okay."

Neither of you hang up. You just close your eyes and listen to his breathing, trying to match yours to the gentle noise, and you breathe in the cold, mountain air. You wonder if this is what cleansing feels like.

It's exactly one week before you find yourself standing at the door to the bunker. You're not sure how you got there – you think maybe the Impala brought you there herself, knowing that it was what you needed – but you're glad that you are.

You open the door without knocking, without any ceremony, and go straight to your room. There's signs that it's been in use, and you remember that Cas said he'd been wearing your clothes. You take a shower and scrub off the weeks of motel room soap from your skin, put on clothes you found in your dresser. For the first time in a long time, you feel clean.

You find Cas first, sitting in the library pretending to read. He's wearing one of your t-shirts, hanging too large on his frame. You clear your throat and he looks up you instantly, as if he hadn't felt you enter the room.

Before you know it, he's up and he's got one hand fisted in your shirt. There's a split second of panic before he's pulling you to him and wrapping his arms around you. You let yourself sink into it, let him be your support.

"Thank you," he breathes into your shoulder. You don't ask him what he's thanking you for. You just let your hands grasp him a little tighter, pull him in a little closer, and you think that maybe this is home.


End file.
